Literacy practices Victorian primary school Year 5/6 teachers use to support the development of disciplinary literacies of science

This thesis investigates Year 5/6 Victorian Australian primary teachers’ understanding of the disciplinary literacies of science and the disciplinary literacies of science practices used in their classrooms when teaching science. The literacies of a discipline provide specialised ways of understanding the knowledge of a discipline in-depth. Literacy is integral to learning science; for students to learn science, they need to move beyond the more general literacies used across disciplines and understand and use the academic literacies of science. Year 5/6, the beginning of the middle years of schooling in Victoria, is a critical time for teachers to understand the importance of teaching disciplinary literacies of science. This research study used a Qualitative paradigm and a Constructivist Inquiry process. The research employed a Case Study design that included multiple data-gathering methods. The researcher was a non-participant observer in four Victorian primary school Year 5/6 classrooms. Data from principal and teacher interviews, student focus groups, classroom observations and documents, and teacher and student artefacts were gathered and analysed to inform the discussion of the demands facing teachers in Year 5/6 primary classrooms in relation to their understandings of, and practices in, disciplinary literacies of science. These multiple data-gathering methods enabled the development of detailed descriptions of the participants' engagement with disciplinary literacies in these settings. This research explored how these Year 5/6 classroom teachers supported student learning of disciplinary literacies of science and built a picture of how these teachers responded to the learning and teaching of science in these classrooms. This enabled the development of detailed descriptions of the participants’ engagement with disciplinary literacies of science, their understanding of disciplinary literacies, and the practices they used in their classrooms. The study found that these teachers understood that students used general and specialised literacies to investigate and engage in science. Embedding these literacies within a constructivist, inquiry-based approach, they explicitly engaged students in using disciplinary literacies of science practices when learning science. These research results add knowledge to the understanding that disciplinary literacies of science practices enhance teaching and learning practices in Year 5/6 primary school classrooms.